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BY MALLORY PERRYMAN

This Sunday lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are glued to their seats, anxious to see who will be the first to stop talking about the middle, and actually go and find the middle.

The bosses from the past few years are under fire for being “too partisan”

HEATH SCHULER (D-N..C): “...Speaker Pelosi as minority leader is truly ... unacceptable for our party."

...or “inefficient.”

JIM DEMINT (R-S.C.): “I appreciate Michael Steele’s service...but I’m looking for some alternatives right now.”

And the President’s top advisor is already hard at work trying to return the big boss back to his glory days of popularity.

CHRIS WALLACE:“How do you win back those states that have turned red again?”

DAVID AXELROD: “Two years is an eternity....The important thing is that we work on the problems that people are most concerned about and that concern the future of this country. If we fail to do that – if we fail or if the Republicans in congress fail to do that then I think each of us will pay a price for that.”

Axelrod says he could leave as early as “late winter” to start working on President Obama’s reelection campaign in Chicago. In the meantime, the Commander-in-Chief is getting his first taste of compromising with a GOP-controlled House.

Axelrod reiterated to Fox News’ Chris Wallace that the President is willing to negotiate on the extension of all Bush-era tax cuts.

Tea Party enthusiast Senator Jim DeMint tells Wallace-- he is too.

JIM DEMINT (R-SC):"I hope we can get a permanent extension...But if the president wants to compromise on a two or three year extension, what's important here is that businesses know what their tax rates are going to be over the next few years so they can plan growth and plan to add people.”

But Senator Chuck Schumer tells CBS’ Bob Schieffer, permanent and temporary aren’t the only options on the table. He has another idea.

SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER: (D-N.Y.): “What if we moved it up to $1 million? Everybody below $1 million would get a tax cut but the millionaires and billionaires won’t....the plan I propose would encompass virtually all small businesses.”

Schumer went on to say-- if Obama stands by the middle class, he won’t have any trouble winning in 2012.

"He will focus on the middle class like a laser."

NPR’s Mara Liasson agrees-- saying this is an opportunity for the President to set up command from the center.

MARA LIASSON (National Public Radio): “He is free to redefine himself as a post-partisan and really think about what that means. Not just being nice and extending a hand and floating above the fray but really pushing back against the extremes in both parties and finding a kind of workable center in terms of policies. Not just the center of the Democratic spectrum of ideas, but the center of the whole political spectrum.”

If the President’s in the middle, where does that leave current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has come under fire for her Minority Leader ambitions? According to the Blue Dog Democrats...Pelosi governs from the left. And the left is where she’ll stay.

Blue Dog leader Heath Shuler says, that’s why he’ll challenge her for the post, even though he knows he won’t win.

HEATH SHULER (D- N.C.): "I can add and subtract pretty well - I don't have the numbers to be able to win...

...I’m hoping Nancy Pelosi will step aside.”

But not every Democrat feels that way-- listen to what Jim Clyburn told CNN about the Speaker.

Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.): "We spent 12 years in the wilderness. Four years ago we came into the majority. Who lead us out of the wilderness: Nancy Pelosi.”
 

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